In
the early days of the internet the idea of beta testing was
pretty much unheard of and games would be tested in their usual
way with play testers during their creation, but as the internet
grew in popularity with a sudden rise in online games there was a
need to not just test the games themselves but also the servers
on which they ran. In most aspects the games were fully tested
beforehand and the manufactures needed a way to get thousands of
people on their severs as a test run before the game's final
release. At first such testing only really applied to PC role-playing
games, and the giant MMORPG games, but with so many games
nowadays running online this also applies to console gaming even
if their online features are minimum.

My
first play test was for a PC game called Seed.
It was a first-person shooter similar to Time Splitters. I
remember it was a real hassle to install and to later remove, but
it was its online features that were to be tested. I loved the
quirky characters and the cartoon-style graphics. Unfortunately I
had problems playing it online, especially with dial-up internet
at the time, so couldn't contribute much on their forums. I'm not
sure what happened to the game or if it was ever had a final
release, as there's little mention of it online.

The
next game I beta tested was a giant MMORPG called RF
Online. It was already a popular game in Korea but
was released in USA and Europe by Code Masters and it was that
version that was being tested. It was the first game of that type
I had ever played online and was very, very addictive. It was
buggy too and I spent a lot of time in the forums posting error
reports. I was particularly annoyed with myself for not spotting
a blatant typo in the name of one of the gaming factions. One of
the annoyances was that it was a European server which was split
onto separate country servers when the game was finally released
meaning a lot of online friends gained from beta testing couldn't
play together in the final release.

My
current PC isn't really suited for gaming so now I tend to beta
test on the PlayStation 4. Mirror's Edge Catalyst
was the first and I was a big fan of the original Mirror's Edge
so was looking forward to playing this one. Technically speaking
it's not a true online game but there are features that only work
whilst online with the main being user created timed races.
Personally I found no bugs to report other than the occasional
lag while some players experienced a full game crash.
Incidentally there's an electronic device in the game referred to
as a shotgun which often got reported as a game bug due to it not
actually being a gun. While I didn't enjoy the game as much as
the original Mirror's Edge I still enjoyed it enough to purchase
the full game when it was released.

The
next game I tested was Overwatch.
Unlike Mirror's Edge Catalyst it wasn't a sequel of another game
and was totally unique in the way it plays. Whilst it's a first-person
shooter there's a lot more to it than that, with each player
possessing their own unique weapons and abilities. The beta test
contained far fewer game modes than the full release which in
turn has, over the years, had far more added since. There were a
lot of very minor character animation bugs and issues with
certain locations upon the maps but nothing major. One bug in
particular, the one shot kill with the character named Hanzo, has
never been fixed to this day leading me to conclude he's supposed
to be that way.

For
more details in date order of my experiences with each game click
on the links above. Please note that certain comments were made
at the time the games were being tested, so certain things said
do not apply to the final release of the game in quesition. This
is particularly true of Overwatch which has had multiple patches
with new characters and game modes added.